News

Woman surprises burglars in her home

Three later arrested, charged with crime, thanks to neighbor's tip

East Palo Alto police arrested a man and two teenage boys suspected of burglarizing a Mountain View home on March 30.

According to Mountain View police spokeswoman Liz Wylie, the victim of the burglary, a 38-year-old woman, returned to her home in the 1400 block of Ernestine Ln., shortly before 10 a.m., and found a thief was inside.

The woman had left to run an errand at about 9:40 a.m., according to Wylie, and upon returning she saw a teenage boy sitting in the passenger seat of a gold Infiniti sedan, which was parked out in front. As she turned into the driveway, she saw the boy look at her, look back at her house and then heard him honking the car's horn.

She pulled into her garage, entered the house and encountered a man in her living room, attempting to break out of the house by smashing through her rear sliding glass door (the man had already broken the inner pane of the double-paned door and was working on the second).

The woman ran back out to the garage, and the man, apparently abandoning the idea of breaking through the back door, followed her out into the garage, got into the Infiniti and drove away.

A detective, who had been working on a March 27 burglary reported on the 1400 block of nearby Lloyd Avenue, recognized the description of the Infiniti. A tipster living on Lloyd Avenue had written down the license plate number of a gold Infiniti sedan that had parked near burglarized Lloyd Avenue house.

At 10:47 a.m. the car was found by Palo Alto police on Cooley Avenue in East Palo Alto, Wylie said. A man and two teens were standing with the car. They were all detained without incident and police found the items that had been taken from the Ernestine Lane home -- two pairs of earrings and a Garmin GPS unit. The man had glass shards in his hair and fresh cuts on his hand.

The victim in the Ernstine Lane burglary had only seen two individuals, Wylie noted, but it was determined that all three were involved in the incident. The two teens -- a 17-year-old from Mountain View and a 15-year-old from East Palo Alto -- were cited and released to the custody of their parents, while the man, 20-year-old Luis Rodriguez of East Palo Alto, was booked into county jail.